Imagine Nepal 2022

What is the ultimate guideline to achieving success and sustaining it? How can one be of a great impression and influence in a room full of people? How can one contribute to their community with a sense of clarity of what they want for their people? To answer and guide us through these questions, Mr. Sahadev Mahat who has been a leadership and management consultant, coach and facilitator moderated a youthful, inspiring and interactive workshop, Imagine Nepal with students at Thames International College. The workshop Imagine Nepal is a platform for young individuals to learn and process strategic planning, capacity building and management skills that are highly essential in the development and management fields. 

The workshop was initiated with an open-ended question,“What do you need to be successful?” The students answers that followed it became a conversation starter. The facilitator then talked about the essentials of being a successful person. The first and foremost element towards success is a vision. What is that you want? How realistic and feasible is it for you to achieve it? A vision can highly influence one’s strategies toward achieving their goal. A person shouldn’t have a one-dimensional way of thinking and solving problems. They should rather have a positive approach toward learning in the pursuit of their vision. The three necessary aspects of fueling a vision are excitement, commitment and love for what you truly want to do. Excitement helps to encompass motivation in one’s work. It gives you a sense of will to push through with endurance and vigilance. 

The next aspect is commitment. Commitment and consistency are mutually exclusive components of working towards a vision. Commitment is required even when a person does not want to do their job. It is when they make a certain task/ritual to be a part of their daily life until the goals are obtained. And lastly, without the essence of love, there wouldn’t be meaning for both excitement and commitment to working towards one’s vision. Therefore, on the cycle of ‘The New Future’ with the implementation of the four D’s- Discovery, Dream, Design and Destiny; in the first stage one has to discover their vision and be self-reflective about their interests as a person. Until and unless a person doesn’t self-reflect then there are bound to be turbulences in the later stages of the process of designing ‘The New Future’. 

According to Mr Mahat, daily journaling is one of the best ways to be self-reflective.   Moving on, to the second stage, the dream is the part where a person begins to vividly see what it would be like to achieve their goal. The mind seems to enumerate a lot of ideas and plans to achieve this goal. However, despite all of their plans reaching the utmost goal, it is necessary to select the one that is most feasible. This transitions to the next step which is the designing. During the designing stage, it is necessary to select a plan that is narrowed down to the most intricate detail. The larger the fragments/sections in a plan, the easier is it to work efficiently. And lastly, the delivery of the plan itself plays a crucial role. It is necessary to stick to the plan but it is also essential to always be on guard for improvisation when things are not under control. Therefore, this is the cycle of ‘The New Future’ when one discovers a vision/goal through self-reflection, finds various plans, narrows them down into a singular, concrete and precise plan and executes them accordingly. 

In the later course of the session, there was an interactive segment where students were made to form groups of two. Likewise, they were given a list of questions to ask their partner. The list of questions was related to the concept of Appreciative Inquiry. Here, appreciative inquiry refers to a form of transformational inquiry that selectively seeks to locate, highlight and illuminate the “life-giving” forces of an individual or organization/community’s existence. This approach is based on solid proven principles for enabling creativity, knowledge and spirit. These questions were the accumulation of things that are asked of public figures who work for the development of a community. Thereby, the participants and their respective partners had an indulgent and interactive session by asking each other questions based on Appreciative Inquiry. The aim of this particular segment in the workshop was to put the theory into practice and to actually be an active listener. Similarly, before the interactive segment, the participants were given handouts that included three poems based on curiosity, commitment, and listening. 

The first poem, Commitment by W.H. Murray, the second poem, “Turning to one another” by Margaret Wheatley and the last poem, Listening by William Stringfellow was read. The participants were given the task to read through each poem and share the things that they related with or the things that they liked about the poems. This helped the participants become more familiarized with the concept of Appreciative Inquiry.  At the end of the session, Mr Mahat advised the participants to interview a person from their respective municipality based on the given questionnaire related to the approach of Appreciative Inquiry. Imagine Nepal, was overall an immersive and fruitful experience for the participants as each of them walked away feeling inspired, appreciative and most importantly motivated to reach a step further towards their vision in life.                   

 

About the facilitator:

Mr Mahat started his career in the organizational and managerial fields in 1995 and holds a master's degree in Neuro-Linguistic Programming which can be of great insight for students studying communications and psychology. His professional expertise includes multi-aspect leadership/management development, capacity building, coaching, mentoring, and team building. In addition, he has also received Master Coach Training organized by the UN in New York on designing and conducting Leadership Development Programs in International Forums.